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Biographical details

My research is in Australian literature and cultural history. I'm especially interested in poetry, and in particular its uses and transformations within popular culture over the last hundred years. A century ago poetry possessed a communal, frequently oral and performative dimension that has now largely disappeared. My research project on the public roles of poetry in Australia seeks to understand how this happened, and to explore modernity’s impact on the everyday life of literary forms. Intersecting with this, I'm writing a book on literary modernism in Sydney, with chapters on a variety of poets and fiction writers from Henry Lawson to Patrick White. I've published two collections of verse, and am working towards a third. I have taught across a wide range of English and Australian literature, as well as literary theory. My postgraduate supervision has included literary and cultural history, Indigenous Australian writing, poetry and poetics, and creative writing.

Kirkpatrick, P. (2009). "We Are but Dust, Add Water and We Are Mud": The Comic Language of "Here's luck". In Fran De Groen, Peter Kirkpatrick (Eds.), Serious Frolic: Essays on Australian Humour, (pp. 97-109). St Lucia, QLD: University of Queensland Press.

Kirkpatrick, P. (2007). Hunting the Wild Reciter: Elocution and Art of Recitation. In Joy Damousi and Desley Deacon (Eds.), Talking and Listening in the Age of Modernity - Essays on the History of Sound, (pp. 59-71). Canberra: ANU E Press.

Kirkpatrick, P. (2009). "We Are but Dust, Add Water and We Are Mud": The Comic Language of "Here's luck". In Fran De Groen, Peter Kirkpatrick (Eds.), Serious Frolic: Essays on Australian Humour, (pp. 97-109). St Lucia, QLD: University of Queensland Press.

Kirkpatrick, P. (2007). Hunting the Wild Reciter: Elocution and Art of Recitation. In Joy Damousi and Desley Deacon (Eds.), Talking and Listening in the Age of Modernity - Essays on the History of Sound, (pp. 59-71). Canberra: ANU E Press.